[Joeboy]

Another thing - you could sell music (ie. records / CDs) at gigs. You can still just about do that but probably not for long, at least with most markets. A small independent band will likely make more profit on a single CD sale than they'll ever make in downloads.

[Robotbeat]

Records nowadays have an mp3 download code with them. The physical media of the record is almost just a placeholder, now, but people still like that even if they don't have a record player (!).

Same thing could apply to some other object. I've seen it done with USB sticks and business cards. Some sort of physical media is still useful for that purpose.